


Cinema Paradiso

by StripySock



Category: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019)
Genre: First Kiss, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Missing Scene, Rain, Roma | Rome, movies - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:28:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25527463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StripySock/pseuds/StripySock
Summary: Ultimately making Rick’s six-month Italian sojourn fairly profitable, although his swank Roman apartment ate up a big chunk of his earningsCliff does stunts, realtors and Rick.
Relationships: Cliff Booth/Rick Dalton
Comments: 16
Kudos: 51
Collections: Rare Male Slash Exchange 2020





	Cinema Paradiso

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SegaBarrett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/gifts).



> Hope you enjoy!

Fleshpot or not, Via Veneto or not, Italy is mostly a disaster. Rick generally sweats through three shirts a day and splashes marinara on the fourth, leaves Cliff to deal with the chambermaids, before they get run out of Le Grand. Their politeness has grown ever more fixed and strained. He's given up smiling at them, and the tips have started to get out of control. Technically the cash is coming in, sweaty handfuls of it just as long as Rick keeps up the fiction that he's walked out of Sergio Leone's wet dreams and onto the screen, but it trickles away just as fast, mostly down Rick’s throat and on the tables.

Last night Rick was four deals deep into an Italian house's moneymaker, and six daiquiris down at the same time and getting absolutely taken for the sweat-stained shirt on his back. When Cliff turned up, slid a hand around his shoulder and leant forward to whisper, "you're an idiot playing blackjack with sharks,” well Jake Cahill would have kicked his teeth in for that. Rick Dalton only looked up blurrily and shrugged, like the house didn’t invariably take all. “C’mon,” Cliff said. “Quit playing high stakes, you ain’t Cool Hand Luke,” a little tease. It could land either way, he could see Rick teeter on the edge. Cliff’s a stuntman, he’s used to playing with fire though. 

Rick walked that edge for half a beat before he nodded and bowed out of the game. The dealer and his poker face struggled to cope with the disappointment at the loss of a reliable fixture. Rick was walking more or less steady, but Cliff knows what it looks like when he’s navigating mostly from memory, got a hand around his elbow to make sure he got to the elevator OK. 

“Cliff,” Rick said, mouth working around the name, nothing else like he’s forgotten how to finish a full sentence, leaning against the wood and polished brass of the immaculate elevator, leaving the handrail a little damp as he clutched it. He didn’t look as out of place as he should. Behind him Cliff could see a slice of his own face and the back of Rick’s head reflected in the mirror. “Cliff,” Rick said, and this time he gets the rest of it out. “We need a new place. This is a shit hole. Expensive shithole. Who gives a fuck if Montgomery Cliff loved it? Bastard’s dead.”

Which is why the next day while Rick films about the one scene in the film that doesn’t require Cliff around to throw himself across bars, through doors and underneath horses, Cliff takes the opportunity to do reconnaissance on the Italian real estate scene. It’s not unlike being in the army. In fact it has a lot in common with his last year in it - humid heat, dust in the air choking every mouthful and doing battle with someone who doesn’t speak English. Luckily the studio’s lent him a translator, a handsome stereotype in immaculate flannels and sunglasses, who could have strolled off the set of Roman Holiday, but whose polish wilts, scratching off to reveal something human underneath after the fifth place that Cliff rejects because Rick will kick up over having to travel too far to film. He insists on a café after that for a break.

“Your friend,” Giovanni says. “He is very picky.” He clearly considers Cliff to be the main troublemaker though, stirs a long spoon in the iced lemon drink reprovingly.

“Very,” Cliff agrees, samples the acqua e menta Giovanni recommended as an antidote against the heat. 

“What we do for the ones we love,” Giovanni says earnestly, without a hint of irony in his voice.

“And the ones who pay us,” Cliff adds, mostly as a matter of habit.

Giovanni gives him a look that is impossible to read, remote behind his sunglasses. “Perhaps,” he says. “A little of both. You know him very well.”

It’s all too European for Cliff’s taste, the drink and the conversation both, and he’s glad to get back to the endless parade of apartments before he has to meet Rick for dinner.

The heat has died down a little, but the air is still and heavy inside the restaurant Rick’s picked to eat at. The glass is sweaty in Cliff’s hand, condensation running down it in sad little trickles. Rick drank his too fast to have the same problem, and is currently gesturing to an uncomprehending waiter as he explains in slow English exactly what he wants next. "Lasagna," he says. There's that blurry unfocused look to his eyes, the slow downward tilt of his mouth as he slurs out the words, that says he had a few that Cliff didn't know about beforehand. 

He licks at the corner of his lip, irritated red skin antagonized by the sun. Rick burns faster here than he does in LA, the makeup artists draw down their mouths when they see him each morning, Max Factor at the ready to cover up the damage. Some days before the camera is turned on him, and he explodes into a larger than life imitation of himself, he looks a little more wax than human. Slumped in a chair ready for take number ten of the same shootout scene, he looks a little dead until you get near enough to see the sweat. Cliff gets DeMille’s closeup of it every day.

The waiter looks uncomprehending, holds the menu in front of him a little tighter, looks at Cliff like he thinks he sees a soberer escape. "Drink?" he says, a little entreaty.

Cliff takes pity on him, holds up his own glass. "Two more of these," he says, holds up two fingers and takes the menu. The staff in here are usually ruder, the waiter must be new. It was a new experience for Rick, the first time he ate out in Rome, an unrecognized face. No need for sunglasses, except to hide his startled eyes, the deepening embarrassing naked pain at the recognition of anonymity. Cliff points almost at random to two menu items, he knows about as much Italian as Rick - margarita and ghiaccio, ice, repeat until cold enough. Rick seems to think that's the worst thing about Italy, that their belief of what constitutes a cold drink is radically different. At least that's what he complains about the most, after everything else.

It usually doesn't matter what he orders, Rick will eat a little, complain, drink a little more and then suggest they go to a bar. After that he'll suggest real food. Real food is usually something close to what Rick considers a pizza, hole in the wall little shops that fold the pizza into a pocket and wrap a paper napkin around it. It doesn't taste like home, but it's close enough for Rick.

There’s a square set to Rick’s jaw, like he’s claiming he won’t be bullied by anyone, but it’s a look borrowed straight from Bounty Law and Cliff feels comfortable in ignoring it. The waiter comes back with two fresh drinks, a pointed carafe of water for Rick, and a dish that Cliff doesn’t catch the name of, but that smells of garlic.

“Jesus,” Rick hisses, picks up a fork and digs in as though he needs a distraction, “is that fucking Norman Jewison?” He looks torn between hope and embarrassment. There’s a reason he picks restaurants near the studio lot.

Rick doesn’t like to mention auditioning for The Cincinnati Kid except when he’s drunk, when he talks in painful detail through the script, and goddamn Eddie Robinson, fucking asshole, he’d say, he’d never had a shot with that bastard in the picture, the role that should have been his, he’d kick McQueen’s ass better in a poker game any time. There’s a lotta roles like that, Cliff likes to listen and picture stunting for the career Rick should’ve had, but it’s mostly Rick’s damage not his. Cliff kind of liked Bounty Law. Always had a soft spot for horses, soft spot for Rick as well, and that’s a hell of a thing. 

“It’s not Norman Jewison,” he says, though fuck knows if it is or isn't. He looks like Norman Jewison if Cliff squints through the cigarette smoke. 

“Maybe I should go over and say hi,” Rick says, and he’s a couple of drinks past that being any kind of idea, Norman Jewison or not Norman Jewison.

“It’s not Norman,” Cliff offers instead. “But I think I saw Sam Peckinpah earlier you know. Around Lot 5 at Cinecittà.” It works, a common grudge usually does. Sam Peckinpah and Rick Dalton, ex sweet-hearts of the Cincinnati Kid. 

The waiter’s placed the other dish in front of him, penne pasta and more seafood - Cliff moves his fork through it dubiously.

“Give it here,” Rick says, gesturing, already offering his own barely touched plate in exchange. Cliff is more than a little puzzled and Rick must see that on his face, because he rolls his eyes. “I know you hate anchovies man.” Cliff swaps, always a little surprised at the things Rick remembers, pleased that he’s forgotten could-be Norman Jewison.

Somewhere between the next drink and the end of the night, the sky breaks outside, soft thunder of rain against the windows, not a storm, just clouds tested beyond their capacity, finally letting go. Rick’s taking it easier, slower, laughs at Cliff’s description of Giovanni, at his imitation of Giovanni’s languid mannerisms, reminds Cliff this is why Rick’s the actor between the pair of them. The candles that light the table softens the passage of years on Rick’s face, smooths out the lines, add a hazy uncertainty to the evening. They could be anywhere really, anywhen. 

When they finally leave, Rick’s shaking out a cigarette into his hands, but it’s raining outside still, warm and wet, impossible to get a light in. Taxi to the bar would be usual right about now, but Rick’s walking into the rain down a street whose blurred outline Cliff thinks he saw in Three Coins in the Fountain. Rome to his eyes is like any other city, mostly it reminds him of films he’s seen, like it’s nothing more than the world’s biggest movie set. Seems fitting that Rick’s here. 

Cliff follows him, hell, they’re already soaked, a little more water won’t do anything now, and like a miracle Rick’s moving in the right direction anyway. When he catches up to him, Rick’s looking up at the sky, letting the water run down in his face, mouth a little open, and Cliff thinks inconsequentially of acid rain, some news reel he’d seen about how it eroded statues, wore down buildings, left a mark as it passed, not unlike age. Rick’s half-smiling though, so it’s probably not melting his teeth. 

“Jesus,” Rick says, “I can’t remember the last time it rained like this. Feels good.” His hands are in his sodden pockets and he’s smiling at Cliff, uncomplicated, almost sober, in the middle of the street, and quietly, almost like the half turn of a key finally opening a lock, something in Cliff moves, resolves and comes into focus, spreads through him like a drop of menthe in a glass of water. There’s nothing he can really compare it to, no name he can put to it, feels like it’s been a long time in the making, and he can’t find the wherewithal to be afraid. It’s only Rick after all.

“Come on,” Cliff says, “just a little further,” and he’s leading the direction now, notices the narrow space between their arms, the way they walk in step automatically. The awareness is not new, there’s no moment of any given time they’re together, that Cliff doesn’t know distinctly where Rick is, he’s just never thought about it before. It’s always been just the way it is.

When he stops at the corner and opens the door to go inside, Rick stares at him in blank incomprehension. “Where the hell are we?”

“Your apartment,” Cliff says and has the pleasure of watching Rick’s face crumple into understanding. 

“You sly fucking dog,” Rick says slowly, with real awe. “You did it today?”

“Yeah, it came furnished, a month’s trial. Giovanni browbeat the guy into it, you should have seen it. Handed over the keys, like he thought Giovanni would shoot him if he didn’t. I think I heard him insist you were Clint Eastwood, here to make spaghettis.”

Once they’re inside the marble lobby, Cliff swings the street door to behind them and fumbles open the door to the apartment. It’s exactly the same as when he saw it first, Rick Dalton scrawled all over it. Extravagant as hell, but Rick wouldn’t take anything else. The owner had opened the windows to air it, left towels in the bathroom and two bottles of red wine in the kitchen, perhaps just in case it was true about Clint Eastwood. When Cliff comes back from checking it out, Rick’s rubbing his hair vigorously with the towel, taken his sodden shoes and outershirt off.

Cliff kicks the bag he’s been toting around all day. “Spare jocks, spare booze, toothbrush. I can get the rest of your things tomorrow if they’re still filming the romantic shit.”

“Tomorrow’s bar scene, they need you on set. We’ll pick it up afterwards,” Rick says, distracted, rubbing his hand over his jaw, and Cliff knows without needing to think about it, that Rick can’t work out how to say thank you without at least another drink in him. Cliff’s used to it, doesn’t need to hear the words really, though it can be fun to watch Rick squirm to get them out, when it occurs to him that he ought to say it.

“Sounds good. Drink?” 

Cliff’s leaning over to hand Rick the glass, when Rick puts a hand around his wrist, strong grip, stronger than you’d think to look at him, catches Cliff off balance. Rick doesn’t usually touch Cliff unless he’s blind drunk, leaning against him for support or pressing his face into his shoulder for seconds to hide his eyes.

“You’re looking at me different,” Rick says it like it’s a conversation previously interrupted, exactly the same tone as always. Hell, even Cliff sometimes forgets that Rick’s smart. Relied a little too much on Rick’s eternal self-absorption to protect him. Try as he might, he still can’t find fear though. Rick might go a little crazy if he thinks Cliff’s got the hots for him, but he probably ain’t going to whale on him, because he knows Cliff will win and Rick has a healthy amount of self-preservation. They’ll just have to wait it out, until Rick’s vanity wins and he takes it as a tribute to his good looks.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Cliff says, tugs against Rick’s grasp. “You want a drink or not.”

“I always want a drink,” Rick says, wry, smiling a little bit, because even Rick Dalton can laugh at himself once or twice a year. “Don’t avoid the topic.”

“Nothing to say,” Cliff says, brief and to the point. If Rick knows, he knows. There’s nothing to say either way. It’s so like Rick not to have the courtesy to allow Cliff, five fucking minutes to figure out how he feels about this himself, that he doesn’t let him get it straight in his own head before he has to explain it to someone else. To _Rick._

Rick lets go of his wrist, but he doesn’t let it drop. Instead he knocks back the shot, practiced enough that he doesn’t even blink. Puts the glass down and looks at Cliff, really looks at him. 

“You know why I noticed?” Rick says. 

Cliff shrugs. “You going to hit me or not?” he says. “I can avoid the nose when I hit back if you want. Keep Bella happy when she does your face tomorrow.”

“You’re an idiot,” Rick says. “Tonight, this is the first time you look back, and you think I’m not going to notice?”

Cliff’s stuck on the _look back_ of that sentence. He doesn’t get much time to stay stuck though, because Rick’s moving with intent, the same energy he brings to his roles, like he knows where he’s going and what he has to do. Like he’s practiced this moment in his head. He gets his hand around Cliff’s neck, spreads his fingers against his neck and pulls him in, slow enough that Cliff could avoid it if he wanted to. He’s never wanted to avoid anything less.

**Author's Note:**

> Note for pure interest: The Cincinnati Kid not only fired Sam Peckinpah (and hypothetically never hired Rick Dalton) but Sharon Tate went in his wake and was replaced with a different actress. Another way for their timeline not to cross. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
